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Re: definite & indefinite articles



--- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Rex May - Baloo <rmay@m...> wrote:
> How useful does everybody think the Loglan words are?  I started 
out with
> the notion that to should be equivalent to loglan le, ti to la, and 
te
> simply a noun marker.  We could designate ta as = to lo, and let te 
also
> serve to mark the indefinite.

There's something vaguely unaesthetic about the mass description 
particle "lo", but J.C. Browne thought it was important to have so 
who am I to argue? I do think that noun phrases have to be marked 
somehow, so "te" can serve as the indefinite or simply be the default 
marker when nothing else seems to apply. I also still like 
Garrett's "da", the "indefinite to you but definite to me" article, 
because it's complicated to convey the idea without such an article 
and the construct is so frequent.

"to" ~ 'definite'
"ti" ~ 'named'
"te" ~ 'indefinite'
"ta" ~ 'mass'
"tu" ~ 'indefinite/definite' (is "tu" already taken?)

I have a feeling that more article differentiation than this will be 
hard for people to learn. Maybe just because it's hard for me.

It just occurred to me, "ta" might work well for abstract stuff. It 
would seem weird to say '"to" honesty is the best policy', but "te" 
wouldn't be right either. 'The general concept of honesty...', 'Mr. 
Honesty...' is what we're talking about, and "ta" seems to fit that.

----Krawn